Crackdown 2's X10 showing last week wasn't rife with new information or details, but it did give us a, surprisingly, hands-off look at some neat new elements of free falling.
As with the original Crackdown, the sequel is really a sandbox of brawling, driving, shooting and destruction. There are plenty of ways to tear things apart and plenty of buildings to explore.
Much of what made the original Crackdown so much fun were those tall buildings, and this time around there are even more to climb to the tippy top of.
Crackdown 2 producer James Cope says that the team made sure to include plenty of huge skyscrapers in the game and also worked to add a sense of vertigo from those obscenely high views.
What I liked most, though, was that this time around you'll have much better control of your free fall in the game. Cope showed off how you can glide from the top of a building, almost horizontally at times, guiding your character through the city as he drops with amazing precision and eventually lands with an enemy-damaging ground pound.
"There's a skill to it," Cope said of the gliding, which did look tricky.
Another way to go vertical in the city is to catch a helicopter and leap off of that, gliding in to your target area.
I got a much better sense of gameplay, both single and multiplayer, at last year's Tokyo Game Show hands-on, but it was nice to see this latest bit of innovation in gameplay movement.
Hopefully, we'll get a chance to check out the gliding first hand next time the game makes a showing.